Over the last decade, there has been a substantial increase in the use and deployment of wireless client devices, from dual-mode smartphones to tablets capable of operating in accordance with a particular Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard. With “wireless” becoming the de-facto medium for connectivity among users, it has become increasingly important for network systems to intelligently manage connections.
For example, in some situations a large number of wireless devices may be operating within a network environment. In this case, data and/or control frames may collide during transmission. Although mechanisms have been presented that potentially reduce the number of collisions in a high traffic or noisy environment, these systems often create unneeded overhead during less congested situations.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.